Drought and Civil War In Sub‐Saharan Africa*

We explore the relationship between drought and civil war. We show that the link between rainfall, temperature and civil war found in the literature may be driven by aggregate shocks (such as global climate) that were not accounted for. A standard differences‐in‐differences specification relying only on within country variation reveals a much weaker and insignificant link between weather variables and civil war. To increase statistical power, we propose a country‐specific measure of drought that describes social exposure to water stress in a more efficient way than rainfall and temperature. We continue to find a weak positive link between drought and civil war.